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How will tiny chips/scratches on a lens effect image quality?


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Recently I noticed my Angenieux 12-120 Zoom lens that came on my CP-16 has gotten a tiny chip and some tiny scratches in the upper corner of the lens. Currently I don't have any 16mm film to test to see if it will have any effect on the image quality, nor do I have an easy way to mount it to a digital camera. I am wondering if anyone here has experiences with using lenses with similar level of scratches/chips on the lens and if it made a discernible difference in the image.  Also the front of the lens rotates as well when focusing, which I am also wondering if it will have an impact. My gut feeling is it probably won't, but until I get some film to test it I would appreciate any input and or experiences people people have.  

 

lens scratch 2.JPG

lens scratch.JPG

Edited by Elliott Atkinson
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A few light coating scratches tend not to be a problem but deep scratches and especially chips can cause issues. If hard frontal light hits those chips it will refract, causing little flare spots.

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4 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

A few light coating scratches tend not to be a problem but deep scratches and especially chips can cause issues. If hard frontal light hits those chips it will refract, causing little flare spots.

Would you say it’s worth getting a new lens? Do you think they’ll be that noticeable?

 I think I fixing it would probably be out of the question since it’s such an old lens. More or less just trying to determine if these little dings are gonna make a noticeable difference shooting on 16mm. 

I was looking online and I couldn’t find much with 16mm specifically on hand but did notice some posts with people using lenses with bigger scratches and it didn’t seem to mess up the image to badly. 

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It depends what you’re filming and how fussy you are, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. If you like shooting into the sun a lot it might start to annoy you..

I’d suggest just shooting with it and see how it looks. You probably won’t notice anything most of the time. Those 12-120 Angenieux zooms are pretty common and shouldn’t cost more than a few hundred dollars anyway if you want to replace it.

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chips can be a problem but scratches rarely show up unless shooting wide angles stopped down. 

If you have a mount adapter to attach the lens to a still camera it will be very easy to test if the marks will show and if they do, which are the settings to avoid if not wanting them to show in the final image. 

I have one 10mm /1.8 made for standard16 and it has one single chip mark close to the center of the front lens. Sadly it shows up badly in the image with all settings and cannot be masked with black etc. or repaired so I may need to get a new lens. It looks like there would be a water droplet on the center of front lens all the time and it shows in all lighting conditions.

So it is possible that the marks limits the lens's use but it needs to be tested with a camera to know

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6 hours ago, aapo lettinen said:

chips can be a problem but scratches rarely show up unless shooting wide angles stopped down. 

If you have a mount adapter to attach the lens to a still camera it will be very easy to test if the marks will show and if they do, which are the settings to avoid if not wanting them to show in the final image. 

I have one 10mm /1.8 made for standard16 and it has one single chip mark close to the center of the front lens. Sadly it shows up badly in the image with all settings and cannot be masked with black etc. or repaired so I may need to get a new lens. It looks like there would be a water droplet on the center of front lens all the time and it shows in all lighting conditions.

So it is possible that the marks limits the lens's use but it needs to be tested with a camera to know

Okay thanks for the advice, through some testing it seemed that the chips really only show up on the wide side of things when there was a strong source of light pointing right at the lens. 

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